When Gmail first appeared in 2004, the idea of having what seemed like a never-ending space for email was revolutionary. Most paid services were providing a few megabytes of space, and here came Google promising a full gigabyte (which, at the time, seemed huge) for free.

Over the years, however, Gmail has added a plethora of features that it touts as “improvements” but some of them are irritating. Worse, it looks for ads for things that it will never need and sticks them at the top of email list.

Back in the dark ages before Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and other free cloud-based apps, most email happened either via paid services or inside of walled gardens. In the former, you paid a service provider for an email account and downloaded your email into an app that only lived on your computer — an app with a name like Pine, Eudora, Pegasus Mail, or Thunderbird.

For the most part, nobody was scanning your email to find out the last time you bought shoes, or whether you were shopping for car insurance, or that you had recently been buying gifts for a relative’s new baby. Nobody was taking that information and selling it to vendors so they could drop ads into your email lists or surprise you with additional promotional messages. Your email lived on your computer alone. Once it was downloaded and erased from the server, it was just yours — to save or erase or lose.

  • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    What gmail did to email, was provide an insanely good spam filter compared to others. It was in their best interest to keep everyones ads out of your email except their own.

    To this very day, I know nobody - NOBODY - who even comes close to Gmail’s spam filtering capability.

    • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      They bought up postini. Before then their spam filtering was poor.

      They then leveraged that to get enterprises ising postini into their email service. This created a vacuum for enterprise spam filtering since many customers did not like the Gmail enterprise features or changes to UI.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      They regularly filter first emails from my self-hosted domain to friends. So clearly they know jack shit and just go overboard on false positives. Google is full of pieces of shit.

    • William@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      A couple years ago I signed up for an email provider so I could use my own domain and avoid Google being able to kill my email account. They’ve got a spam filter, but it’s ridiculously bad. I’ve been looking for better ways, but still haven’t found them.

      Ironically, I’m hoping a free locally-run LLM will soon be able to filter emails appropriately. I haven’t seen anyone trying yet, but I’m sure they’re out there.

      • Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        Protons spam filter is really good in my experience as well, and you can also use your own domain.

        The only downside so far imo is that you can’t just add it as an imap or pop3 server to any mail client, you have to use their apps or host their bridge somewhere. Something to do with their e2ee I think.

    • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I get a lot of spam/phishing in one of my Gmail accounts for some reason. They send me PDF attachments with nude pics on them of hot ladies that ostensibly want to meet my penis and stuff. “Click here!” it says on the nude pic PDFs, with links to .ru websites and junk

    • Krzd@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Even Thunderbird has a better spam filter after you train it for a few days.

    • lastweakness@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      So far, Proton has been doing a better job than Google ever did for me. Especially considering that they don’t even read my mail content, that is genuinely impressive to me

    • mbfalzar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      The Gmail spam filter filters out emails from Google, half the 2FA authentication emails I get, things I’ve actively subscribed to and hit “not spam” on several times, and does not block “You’ve won a Home Depot gift card!” from [email protected]

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      To this very day, I know nobody - NOBODY - who even comes close to Gmail’s spam filtering capability.

      I disagree. Perhaps you need hard evidence for a claim like that.

      I have a gmail account, and a proton mail account. My gmail account is packed with spam. It has so much spam its crazy. The account is basically unusable. Which is fine, because I no longer trust google. It’s been years since I’ve told anyone to use this account.

      On the other hand, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve got a spam message in my inbox on protonmail. In fact, I remember. It’s 2. The account isn’t as old, but I’ve used it to sign up for at least as many things. It’s my main account now - partially because I’ve turned anti-google, but also because its not choked by mountains of junk.

      (To be fair, I suspect the main reason that my gmail account is so bad is that it has a popular username, and other people have accidentally signed up for things with my email accidentally instead of their own. Nevertheless, the fact is that the gmail is spam-central, and the protonmail account is clean.)

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    When I left college, my university closed my email account. That sucked, but I moved on. Then the paid service I used closed down, so I had to change again. That sucked. I lost access to my Xbox Live account because they send all my “update password” emails to that old address and won’t update to my new address without confirming the change on an email that no longer exists.

    Now I’ve had the same email address for 17 years and really really don’t want to move on, even though I hate that it is with Google. They went from “don’t be evil” to “be as evil as possible.”

    • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      I joined gmail in beta so similarly had had my address for an absurd amount of years.

      Last year I completely switched over to proton for everything and keep my gmail as a junk account for shit I want to sign up for but don’t want to dirty my main with.

      It was a daunting feeling undertaking at first but honestly it took me a couple of hours to go through and change the email on things I actually use and want to keep.

      It was a nice freeing feeling and really helped me weed out what accounts I truly use and want to keep. I would highly recommend it as a cleansing exercise as much as anything else!

      • wild@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Could you share some more thoughts on your experience with Proton over the last year after switching from Gmail?

        • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          I don’t know if I am the best person to ask as I am not really a “power user” or anything. It sends and receives emails and isnt google which is all I really need, I can’t really talk about any features it may or may not have that people might look for.

          I like that I can make up to 10 different address from within that same account, send emails from any of those accounts from just a drop down box without logging in and out of different accounts.

          I like that they give me credit to my account based in how much space I actually use in my inbox.

          I recently upgraded to an “ultimate” type account which covers all their products for me and my gf to try and encourage her to move away from google. The way the drive works is a bit counter intuitive in my opinion and the password manager thing seems to work well across both windows and android but I’ve never used a password manager programme before so it could be dogshit in comparison to others, but it seems to work well for me.

          Never tried the VPN as I pay for AirVPN.

          Sorry, not very insightful for you in terms or details but I like it a lot and it all works well for me, I’ve never had issues with any of the apps or logging in and accessing my stuff. The primary thing for me was moving away from google.

          • wild@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Thank you, this is helpful! I hadn’t heard about the credit for unused space. That’s kinda cool.

    • asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I bought a custom domain and use it with Proton. If Proton shuts down or something I can easily use the same domain with another provider.

    • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      That is a good point. I have moved to Proton mail but I keep my Gmail account as a backup and it’s part of my still used Google account. Can’t see myself ever shutting it down completely just in case, as much as I avoid Google as much as possible now.

  • everett@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Ctrl+F: “thread” “conversation” zero results

    I feel like people have forgotten how email worked before, when webmail providers were emulating the desktop client model of “received messages go in Inbox, Sent folder is for sent.” Gmail’s conversation view was shockingly intuitive, one of those “why hasn’t it always been this way?” things that feels so obvious in retrospect.

    • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      I have always used conversation view in my desktop email client. Not sure why you think this is revolutionary or exclusive to gmail.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It was a novel new feature they introduced decades ago. Email was far less organized before then.

    • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I read some sysadmin forums about Conversation View, and most of them say users regularly ask how to turn it off. I always turn it off immediately.

  • WhyFlip@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Who else doesn’t see ads in Gmail? I never have and have been using it since its inception.

  • net00@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Imagine using a google service. Do yourselves a favor and use anything else, even outlook, over Google.

  • Technotica@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So you could just use Email in these archaic programs called Thunderbird etc. If you really wanted to use gmail. You know, without adds, without the need for an ad blocker, without AI recommendations and at your leisure.

    But hey, you’d have to install something on your computer for that… how horrible.

    And who uses computers for work anyway, you can just write your essay on a tablet. (but there are also email apps on those)

    It’s a shittier way to work but hey it’s easier.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    We started using more than one device and web accessed mail became the norm. POP3 still exists and you can use mail clients and delete everything off the server. Come to think of it, maybe we can then use syncthing to sync the mail across all other devices? Maybe?

  • foxfell@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    I’m still using gmail, but reading it trough the same old school local clients downloading everything trough imap. For everything important i have tutanota and private servers. Proton indeed looks like honeypot to me.